Lingo

FYI, I think I do remember a line about Mark having just signed his divorce papers. That shot of Maggie and Bruce in bed was an awesome WTF moment. I might have cackled with the glee of surprise. I really wanted to see more of Maggie and Mark getting down on the dance floor though.

Is it just me, or do you think they intentionally drop a gratuitous exclamation of "shit" in every episode just because they can?

Thumbs down for "Our Song", thumbs up for just about everything else!

I feel like Dan is not a fully-formed character, which makes him feel even more obviously like an artificial roadblock in the Emma/Mark OTP. And by not fully-formed, I mean that if you look at almost every other character on the show, they are all wacky in some instantly obvious and memorable way. But Dan has not really shown any wacky traits; he's just generically charming in a standard rom-com way. And that's a shame. I too was wondering what Emma does for work now. I think she's got a bunch of savings that she must be living on now, but she'll probably have to get a job sometime soon (if I heard right, we're already 9 months after Charlotte's birth). I had gotten the impression from S1 that she was using her business skills in the occasional side job here and there -- or maybe I'm just thinking about her organizing the cop fundraiser? Honestly it seems like everyone on this show has a whole lot of time on their hands. The only two characters we see working regularly are Mark and the waitress. The whole town seems upper-crust, actually.

Yes! Birdbones at the end there was the highlight of an episode that otherwise disappointed me with a by-the-numbers love triangle. Hopefully the next episode will take it somewhere unexpected. I'm glad this episode finally addressed what Maggie does for a living, because I had just begun wondering how these two ladies could afford raising Charlotte and living in that house. Now I just wonder how exactly her parents died. S2 finale reveal?

I don't watch this show, but these women look like they're dressed up for an epic night of Magic: The Gathering.

Tell me the original movie is available on Netflix at the same time. Please universe, make some sense.

Nightmare fuel!

So can we agree that trampoline-centered challenges have got to go? I don't mind when they're used as the initial entry point to a stage like the salmon ladder or the cargo net, but the results of the hourglass drop felt too random, rather than based on skill. Also, I agree that the Spider Climb from last year need to be made either more difficult or replaced, seeing how almost everyone who attempted it last year completed it, but does EVERY single challenge have to be based on upper body strength now? At least the spider climb mixed it up with a focus on leg strength. I was shocked that not even Kevin Bull and the Godfather could complete the course. Also show, i don't mind at all when you skip over the early losers, and even some of the winners in the city qualifiers. But only 6 people made it to the Clear Climb, and you skip over one of them? C'mon. But hey, go Jessie Graf! She was awesome. Fourth woman up the wall ever, first player to reach the Clear Climb tonight, and 6th overall. Very impressive. You mean Kacy? Oh yeah, Wild Card for sure. Jessie won't need a wild card.

Greg was in the casting "spoilers" thread almost right up until the voting was announced, so it seems like maybe he had to drop out at the last minute.

He talks a million miles an hour, but once he got over his anger at Mike he was able to talk persuasively about his strategy and experience. If he'd gotten to the end, I definitely think he could have beaten Sierra and Will, probably Dan, maybe even Carolyn. It depends on how angrily he would have reacted to their questions, I guess.

So let's see, who didn't get in? WOMEN: T-Bird, Stephanie, Natalie, Mikayla, Sabrina, Carolyn MEN: Shane, Jim Rice, Troyzan, Culpepper, Max, and Mike (ineligible) I'm betting it was Andrew Savage who was bumped up when Mike won. I guess I'm most surprised and disappointed by Shane's elimination than anyone's. T-Bird was also a disappointment and a bit of a surprise, but I suppose both of them were a bit too old (both in age and in season). Maybe a bit surprised that Carolyn didn't make it, and I kinda feel like she deserves another shot, but I won't miss her too much. My last disappointment: Terry, ugh!

Well, to paraphrase the all-knowing Dan, opinions may differ, but facts are facts, and when you're wrong, you're wrong. So I have to admit I was very wrong, and I'm sorry about that. From the very bottom of my heart! I hope that you can be a big enough man to forgive me. ...Anyway, I was wrong. I guess people do vote for villains. Though how they vote for those two and not Shane still boggles my mind.

Yeah, I understand the recency effect, but trying to get in the mindset of the "Casual Fans" that are supposedly doing all the voting, I don't see them voting for people they hated even though they remember them (unless they were funny, ala Keith and Shane perhaps). And these "Casuals" are not watching interviews or listening to RHAP or anything like that, so the contestants don't have a shot of giving them a better second impression. I understand the concept of "love to hate", but for me, there are very few, if any, players who fit that bill (usually I just hate). But of course I'm projecting my own mindset on these hypothetical voters.

I don't get people thinking Kass and especially Abi-Maria are locks. I never voted for them. They were so unpleasant, they made me want to tear my hair out watching them. And neither seemed particularly smart. I don't want to see again people that I hated. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

What could possibly go wrong?? I'm sure they're allowing people to vote during the first hour of the finale because the casual fans will have forgotten about the vote since last week. They'll remind them to vote one more time during the commercials.

You can also watch it on cbs.com. Something interesting (and this is confirmed in a bonus video) is that Laura and Tyler had no idea they were in the lead on that final task. They thought Hayley and Blair were already long gone and that they were racing for second place. It's only after Laura spotted H&B in the monster truck that they discovered that they were in the lead.

For some reason I started playing around on Google Maps this evening, and wondered what the longest possible direct automobile route Google Maps can plan for you (e.g. directly from City A to City B, with no pre-set intermediate destinations). I came up with a route that goes from L'Algulhas, South Africa, to Magadan, Russia. It's a 337-hour drive (14 days) and 14,869 miles (23,929 km). Now, can you imagine a season of the Amazing Race in which they had to take that route, exclusively by car? This is purely fantasy, of course. That particular route would be too dangerous -- for anyone really, and Americans in particular (it goes straight through Iraq and Iran, among other places). But a really long car trip through many exotic foreign countries (this route has at least 17) could be an interesting diversion from a typical TAR season, even if it didn't go all the way around the world. Or how about from the tip of Alaska to Tierra del Fuego? Google Maps won't plan that one directly, apparently because not only does it refuse to to plan a trip that crosses a Colombian border, but also because apparently no roads exist between Colombia and Panama (!). But you can Google Map out routes from Homer, AK to Yaviza, Panama; from Necocli to Ipiales in Colombia; and from Tulcan, Ecuador to Punta Arenas, Chile. Adding those together produces a trip of 265 hours (11 days) and 13,423 miles (21,602 km). Or if you could somehow get a car from Magadan, Russia to Homer, AK (or from Puntas Arenas, Chile to L'Algulhas, SA), you could do a season with both!

I just want to ditto everyone's thoughts about the final tasks being all flash and no substance. It seems that more and more lately they pick tasks that they think look good on TV, but leave little room for the teams to show their stuff and give themselves opportunities to pass each other through skill. The football challenge was only a little tough (though it can be tricky to kick a ball from a stand if you're not used to it), and yeah, there was no actual herding in that herding challenge. Then the tower, which really should have been a breeze for Hayley. The trucks again look good but were no challenge. The only real challenges, I guess, were the lock and ordering the photos. So I was pretty depressed around the halfway point when B&H seemed to have an insurmountable lead, as lead teams so often get in final legs. All that said, it was surprising how close it was through most of the leg, and how often the order of the teams changed. For a minute there at the end I thought Jenny and Jelani were actually going to win, which would have been a big (and welcome) surpise to me, considering how often they foreshadowed a Laura&Tyler / Blair&Hayley showdown. But in the end it was indeed one of those two teams, and I'm sure glad it was not Hayley.

Yep, Dallas.

No, as of right now you get 10 free (i.e. the entirety of the current season, I think). The player really sucks though. Sometimes when I try to rewind back, it won't let me, or it will oddly skip several minutes ahead. If that skip takes me into or through the next commercial break, then I have to watch all the commercials before being able to get back to the show and try again to rewind. The other night I was watching Survivor, and tried to rewind during tribal council. It instead skipped all the way to the end. I had to watch the end commercials, restart the video, watch the starting commercials, make several attempts to fast forward back to the tribal council (it resisted going so far forward), and then of course watching some of the commercials I skipped before finally getting back to the good stuff. And I have to rewind often because the video often slows down to the point that the picture is no longer moving, and I have to press pause, wait for the audio to come to a stop, then rewind again to catch the parts I missed. I don't know if that's entirely due to a slow internet and wonky wifi connection on my end, or partly endemic to CBS's player. And I hate that before every single bonus video I have to watch a commercial (of comparable length to the clip itself -- and usually it's the same one over and over again).

It was on Wednesday the last 2 seasons as well (28 & 29), and it's always a final five if the FTC has 3 remaining.

But I'm sure you just mean that metaphorically, right?

The fact that she was gutsy enough to draw a rock was impressive in itself.

OK, in this Parade interview Jeff reveals a little more about how these people were selected: There's more but that's the part that interested me most.